A Day in the North: Ras Atiya and Habla

Palestinian Grassroots Anti-apartheid Wall Campaign

Wednesday October 29, 2003

A Day in the North: Ras Atiya and Habla

The Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign’s three Emergency Centers in the northern West Bank continually send in information regarding destruction and devastation from the Wall. Information sent from the Emergency Centers will be published regularly under the heading “A Day in the North”, surfacing the daily devastation which the Apartheid Wall continues to lay upon Palestine.

Ras Atiya, Qalqiliya district

***image5***The Wall’s “access gates” are regularly closed and, if the Israeli soldiers do open the gates, the times are sporadic making it nearly impossible for residents to tell when they will be able to leave the village. The students are consistently late for school as the soldiers are not opening the gates even when a time was announced for students to pass.

Moreover, the Occupation military shot bullets and fired sound grenades towards students and outside the school, threatening to close the school. These aggressive measures against the students are having a tremendous impact on their psychology as they concentrate more on what the Occupation military is doing outside the school rather than being able to focus on their learning.

Last week the soldiers closed the gate and, after some hours came and announced that from that point on no Palestinian will be allowed to pass through the gate unless they have “permits”.

Habla, Qalqiliya district

The Wall surrounds the village and residents inside have no exit but through two gates that were made on the Wall, one between Habla and the city of Qalqiliya and another to the south. Both gates were closed for nearly all of this month; for only ten days they were infrequently opened for limited hours. The Occupation military is requiring people to obtain permits for passage through the northern gate to Qalqiliya. People trying to reach Qalqiliya without permits are being detained for hours at the gate and forced to return from where they came.

The Occupation military is barring the people from using their ground water wells as they are prohibiting workers from accessing the lands in order to put motors on the wells, sometimes they allow the workers to go for a few hours.

Furthermore, the Occupation military have erected a tent on Palestinian lands isolated behind the Wall. This tent is causing people to hesitate about going to their lands due to the repeated harassment, humiliation and detention they face from the soldiers. The continued closure of the gate has lead to many agricultural crops perishing behind the Wall.